Woud you really have liked the Suffragettes?

Not quite a Suffragette but my Grandma was part of The Women’s Peace Crusade 1917–1918 in East Lancashire. She broke all sorts of rules/conventions of the time even though her parents disapproved. I am so immensely proud of her and her beliefs and principles and I'm sure these have been passed on to me and her great grandaughters. The GGDs are all strong, independent women. but super, caring mums as well. Both causes were worth fighting for and I would like to think in the same circumstances, I would be as committed to the cause as these women were.

My paternal grandmother was a feisty, modern woman, from impoverished gentry. She admired the Suffragettes and named her daughter Christabel after Christabel Pankhurst but I don’t think she was involved as such - probably too busy with war work and then raising three kids without a resident father.
My maternal grandmother was a parlourmaid in a large country house at the time. I don’t think she was ever a politically aware person - not the Suffragette type at all.
Would I have liked the Suffragettes? I probably would have supported the cause in theory, but I’m not brave enough to have been really involved!

Desperate to get what they wanted. I wouldn’t like to have lived then.
People who feel or think they have rights to certain things often turn to violence.

I was recently reading about New Zealad which achieved women's suffrage in 1893, decades before other countries, and with virtually no violence, just hard work and the submission of many huge petitions . Every country is different , but I'd agree that I would not have wanted to be a suffragette . I hate violence , and would probably have been too busy working as a servant, as all my ancestors were during that era.

One of my great heroines is Sylvia Pankhurst. She broke with her family on many issues, particularly with them going over to full support for what was called the First World War. My family came from London's East End, and my g.mother and my mother all can well remember the great work that Sylvia did down there.

Sylvia was an unmarried mother at 42, her son was still linked to the Uni course when I was studying, she also had a transport cafe and of course remained politically active until the end of her life. She was such a pioneer for women.

My grandmother was a Suffragette, so yes, I am proud of her for having the guts to speak up and say something about women's inequality of that time.
I have a photograph of her pictured with Sylvia Pankhurst.
I vaguely remember her but was quite young when she died.
She was quite an eccentric according to my mother.
Her husband (my grandfather) was a German Jew, killed in a concentration camp during the war. She had obviously separated from him by then.

Thanks to everyone who has posted their personal family suffragette histories. I do love to read them.
Saggi I can't read anything in my posts which would lead you to such a strange conclusion about me but I can assure you you are way off the mark.
I think the idea that these sort of activities are the work of young women is probably true for the most part although a few managed to carry their activism into old age.
The expectations society places on women are still restrictive and women are still punished because they don't fit the mould.
It is interesting that New Zealand women ot the vote so much earlier. The dates tie in very well with the dates women could vote in local elections and even stand on local councils.1869 single women ratepayers could vote in local elections. 1894 women of property could vote in local elections, sit on school boards and act as Poor Law Guardians

In a word, NO

My grandmother (born in 1865) thought Suffragettes were "not quite nice" and "not behaving as ladies should". Well, she was there, I wasn't!

I am thankful to them for paving the way to this new day. What is most surprising is that we still have so much change to still manage. When will there be no more women's work and men's work, just work? I have always thought that to make job applications truly fair, we should remove the line asking for "name" as we mostly know then your gender and cultural identity.
I do know from experience that women who are brave enough to enter into politics must work, much, much harder than men.
Keep pushing for our girls!

I've wondered about the name/gender issue as well NanaNancy. Friends who applied for jobs with anglicised rather than Indian/Pakistani names were more likely to be invited for interview.
There is still the 'debate' about whether its unreasonable to expect companies to employ ane properly support women of child bearing age, especially if they have the temerity to get pregnant. My observation of my adult children's employers responses to these things led me to conclude we're going backwards.
Women who are brave enough to enter politics/the workplace do have to work much harder than men.
I suspect some young women took for granted the rights we fought for, like mat leave, carer leave etc - they're shocked to find these issues weren't fought for by the suffrage movement but by their mothers.

Oh Trisher, what a privileged position to come from! These women fought and sacrificed in order that future generations of women including you and I would have the vote. And now we look back over our shoulders at them and cringe? You are ashamed of them? Oh please.

Let others do the hard work for us and then disavow them, act like we had it already - nobody did anything for us we're entitled! Oh dear. Prefer to keep it a secret how unentitled we were until these women turned it round?

- Applying hard-won modern day PC and sensibilities to conduct in an era of barely disguised hostility to women, from the comfort of our 21st century sofas, with our information technology in homes we probably own, speculating whether we'd like them - Facebook?!

AmMaz Nowhere in my posts does it say I am ashamed of these women. There is substantial evidence that after WW1 some suffragettes were ashamed of the most violent acts and the women who committed them and wrote these out of the first published works about the movement. That in fact. a lot of the very violent acts remain undocumented today and the perceived image of a suffragette is a young woman breaking windows or throwing stones. It is reasonable to ask people to look at what they did and to give their opinion about them.
In fact the violence and the names of the women who committed it has been kept secret, or at least not talked about and examining why this is so and why women felt they could not embrace the worst violence, but chose to suppress it is of interest to me. And looking at how women today feel about these things is valuable.

Hi Trisher it's good for us to know the unsanitised truth of what those women felt they had to do to bring us the benefits we now enjoy and take for granted. So thank you for providing the link so we can be informed. As an exercise in opening our eyes to that I applaud your post.

Perhaps for the reasons that Hollycat mentioned gtrisher
My grandmother (born in 1865) thought Suffragettes were "not quite nice" and "not behaving as ladies should"

Women were traditionally the nurturers, in those days the more middle class suffragettes would be considered to be 'genteel'. Perhaps a little window breaking or stone throwing would be considered quite daring by some but anything more than that could be a considered unacceptable and shameful by wider society - even though worse violence was perpetrated against them.

I think I would have supported the suffragists but would have felt uncomfortable about law-breaking to achieve my aims, preferring to use dogged persistence.

where did the g come from? sorry.

My great grandmother was a suffragist I believe rather than a suffragette she was also an Oxford “blue stocking” we are all very proud of her

The powerful never give up power voluntarily in my reading.

netflixfan that is so true. One of the reasons that the sufffrage bill wasn't passed although it went to a second reading was that the men were uncertain about how women would vote. Those on the right thought they would be too radical and those on the left that they would be too conservative. Joseph Cowen a radical MP for Newcastle said he believed women should have the vote, but that once they had it there would never be another radical MP elected in Newcastle because women were too much under the power of the church and priests.

My understanding was that at the end of WWI it was accepted that women would get the vote, but as so many men had died they couldn't/wouldn't let the women voters outnumber the men, hence the changes were brought in slowly. Didn't they also enfranchise a lot of non-property-owning men at the same time?

All men over 21 got the vote in 1918. Women over 30 who were householders got the votei n 1918. Women did not get the vote on equal terms with men until 1928. And yes the number of women would have outnumbered the number of men voting if they had been given it in 1918 and i age restriction was put on.t is thought that is the reason the

Sorry the last line seems to have mixed itself up It is thought that was the reason the age restriction was put on!

My nana was a suffragIST. And a Quaker and a pacifist. Opinionated and slightly barmy. She didn’t think much of the suffragette movement and said they put the cause back by their actions. I rather think they were necessary to bring things out into the open. Petitions, speeches and flag waving could too easily be ignored.

I understood the suffragette movement floundered rather with the onset of the Great War when women went into factories and took over the work of their men, but the suffragist movement carried on its quiet work. My tiny nana worked on biplanes used by the infant airforce. I have a photo somewhere of her with two other girls in front of a plane - she’s standing on the wheel in order to be the same height as them.

As in all movements, there are always people who take things to extremes - and there are also agents provocateur whose job it is to incite violence in order to discredit a movement.

I think votes for women was a very worthy cause and that some sort of civil disobedience was justified. I don't think criminal acts such as arson or planting bombs can be justified, although I can understand that in situations where people have been subjected to extreme violence and oppression themselves they are likely to retaliate using similarly violent methods. Apart from
extreme situations where the majority of the population has been terrorised and would welcome an armed intervention, generally speaking I think violent actions tend to alienate public opinion so are not necessarily effective anyway.

I think it also has to be borne in mind that the suffragettes were very cruelly treated - force fed and beaten.